AIOU plans digital transformation in 18 months

Islamabad : The Allama Iqbal Open University, the largest public sector distance learning university in the country, has planned its digital transformation by the end of the next year to adapt to the digital age.

“After carrying out a rigorous analysis of our operation for four to five months, we’ve developed a digital transformation policy to roll out technology-enabled solutions for academics, administration, and finances. This initiative promises the university’s complete academic restructuring within 15-18 months as required in the digital era to increase the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of all processes from the offering of admissions to the award of degrees,” AIOU Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr Zia told ‘The News’.

Prof Dr Zia, who had assumed the VC’s charge in November last year after appointment by the president for a term of four years, said the university had finalised a roadmap for open learning in line with the current academic needs and modern trends.

He added that the administrative restructuring was on the anvil, while means and strategies were being evolved to ensure better financial discipline, especially when the university met around 90 per cent of its expenses from own resources.

The VC said not only had the AIOU fulfilled its basic objective of offering formal education to a large number of people on their doorstep and promoting community education over the years but it was striving to increase the quality of its education as well.

“We can’t ignore the need for constant improvement in our educational standards in modern times of growing competitiveness. Besides employing modern ways and means, especially technology, to improve the students’ learning, we also talk about the relevance of education. There will certainly be a marked change in things at our university after digitisation,” he said.

Prof Dr Zia said the university had increased its nationwide reach since he had joined it by setting up five more regional centres taking the tally of such facilities to 49, while the establishment of more centres in Balochistan, merged tribal districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and other parts of the country was on the cards.

He declared education two-way traffic and said if the teachers were supposed to offer quality education, then the students should also be in a receptive mode.

“It’s a natural phenomenon that if the students have the urge to learn and they’re demanding, the teachers are under pressure to prepare well for lessons. However, if the students behave like deaf and dumb persons, then the teachers take little interest in classrooms, so this push and pull is imperative for this entire learning and teaching exercise,” he said.

The VC said the AIOU had planned training programmes to build the capacity of its tutors with the help of foreign universities, while its academic collaborations with University of London, Open University of UK and some other European varsities were also in the works.

He said the public sector universities needed to reduce their dependence on the government’s funds by finding new ways to generate resources, especially the creation of endowment fund and inviting of competitive research funding, to meet expenses.

Claiming some public and private Pakistani universities are producing quality MPhils and PhDs, who are recognised worldwide, Prof Dr Zia called for the introduction of better evaluation for academic standards in higher education institutions to check ‘slackness’.

“Some people call the PhDs produced by our universities junk. In my humble opinion, such a sweeping statement is an insult to our respected teachers,” he said.